


Rhyme Or Reason

by icewhisper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16612889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: The story they told:They met in juvie when Mick saved Len.The real story:For all his mother’s warnings, Mick still made friends with the fae boy that lingered at the edge of their property.





	Rhyme Or Reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nirejseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/gifts).



> Happy birthday to nirejseki/robininthelabyrinth! I know how much you love fae stuff, so... I tried??? An attempt was made. You can decide how successful it was. Haha.

Lenny had been around as long as Mick could remember.

A passing shadow at the edge of his vision.

A quiet chuckle curled into the whistle of the wind.

A toy that went missing, just to be returned with flowers wound around it like the wrapping on a present.

He saw Lenny more as he got older, learned to recognize the image of the skinny boy with his pale skin, bright eyes, and a smile that stretched too wide to be normal. His teeth were too sharp, his skin pulled too tight over ribs, his ears a little too pointed. He wasn't human at all.

He should have run the moment he realized what Lenny was. Mick knew his mother would have told him to run  She’d cling to the iron cross she always wore around her neck and tell him to come inside. She’d hammer horseshoes above every doorway in the house while spitting that Lenny wasn’t welcome, because she didn’t trust the fae and _Mick, you know they’re dangerous_. He did. He _did_. His grandmother had lost a brother to the Underhill back when they were children in Ireland; lost to the forest and dined on food that made him theirs.

But Lenny was his _friend_. He was there when the kids at school scattered, scared of Mick and the way his brain went fuzzy when someone lit a birthday candle. Lenny didn’t judge him. He watched and he grinned that too-wide thing that should have terrified Mick, but didn’t. He made the wind whip when the kids were mean and scared them until they ran away.

And Len… Len _saved him_. He saved Mick’s whole family when Mick was fourteen and the little fire Mick had built had grown into something too big. He shouted and he screamed and Mick watched his eyes turn a terrifying shade of blue before everything…stopped.

The flames stopped crackling.

The heat turned cold.

“Time is time, but not yours to decide,” Len told him.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Seventh son or only one?” Len asked and tilted his head at him in that creepy way he always did when his riddles turned into rhymes. “Seven to one and two to none.”

He’d kept the flames still while Mick shook his family awake, murmuring his riddles every time one of them came rushing out of the house. His siblings knew better than him, though, and they didn’t go to Len. They didn’t give him their thanks and their names the way Mick had when he thought a fae as young as he and Lenny could be harmless.

He’d stopped thinking Len was harmless when a teacher had slapped Mick across the face for talking back and was found the next day with a throat-full of rose petals, because _tick tock goes the clock, counting down on Mr. Knox_.

“He _helped us_ ,” Mick argued when his ma clutched at him and said he couldn’t play with Len anymore. “He made the fire stop!”

“The fae don’t do things out of kindness!” his mother cried back at him. “You gave him an opening to come onto our land! He’s got your _name_!”

“He’s my friend!”

“He’s not human!” Her hands gripped at his shoulders, nails digging in past his t-shirt. She looked terrified.

“He tried to be!” Mick insisted. “He told me!”

His mother snorted, but Mick couldn’t make her understand the twisting story Lenny had riddled out to him once. He didn’t think she cared.

 

 

Len lurked at the edges of Mick’s vision while his family rebuilt their house, but he never got close enough for Mick to _talk to_. Liam – the second-youngest – came tearing up the driveway one day, screaming that the fae had tried to take him and pointing wildly down the way as he stuttered.

Their mother sobbed.

Their father swore to lay iron beams in the ground around the house, as if the iron they were using to build it wasn’t already enough to keep Len away.

“He wasn’t trying to _take_ Liam,” Mick insisted. “He was trying to tell us there was another dry spell coming!”

“Mick-”

“No!” he shouted. “He knows! He’s good with time. _Fire bright, fire light_ is what he says when he’s trying to tell me to be careful about the fires. He knows it can catch.” Mick set his jaw. “None of you will let me _talk to him_. He had to try and tell Liam.”

They still sent him off to his room, but Finn – the oldest of them – came looking for him later, crawling up into the barn’s loft and peering at him from the ladder. “Figured you weren’t in your room,” he said with a teasing grin. “Can I come in?”

“You’re gonna anyway,” Mick grumbled.

But Finn didn’t. He balanced himself on the ladder and leaned on the loft’s floor with his forearms to watch Mick from a distance instead. “You know Mom and Dad are just scared, right?”

“He’s not trying to hurt us!”

Finn nodded, serious, but he’d always been the only one that didn’t look at Mick and see a broken kid. Mick had hated when he went to college in Central and hated it even more when Finn graduated and got a job all the way in Starling. “Tell me about him?” he asked and gave Mick a tiny smile when Mick looked at him, surprised. “Sounds like I’ve missed a lot.”

So Mick told him. He let Finn in and his brother listened to him talk about Len. How his human mother had realized he was a changeling and gave him back. How Len used to be trapped at the edge of their property, unable to come closer and pull himself from the trees. How he’d still been able to speak normally the first time they’d talked, scared of fully giving himself to the fae and not wanting to lose himself. “He was gonna lose his name and his parents weren’t gonna remember him. He wanted someone to know him.”

“How could he know you’d remember it after?”

Mick shrugged. “Fae’s fae. He was already one of them, so giving me his name gave _me_ the power. S’what he said, at least. By the time I told him mine, he could only do the riddles.” He looked down at his hands, sad. Len had been so scared when he’d started losing the ability to speak plainly.

Finn hummed. “You know, I’d be scared trying to talk to one of them,” he confessed and Mick knew he wasn’t just trying to make him feel better. The others would have, but not Finn. "You know I’m no good at riddles.”

“It’s not too hard with him,” Mick admitted, a little fond. “When stuff’s important, he rhymes. When it’s not, he sounds like a weird fortune cookie.”

“Fortune cookie?”

“He predicts things, sometimes. Little things.”

“Like the dry spells?”

Mick nodded. “He uses rhymes because it’s weird. He likes being weird.” Finn chuckled beside him and he looked at his brother, pleading. “He’s really not trying to hurt anyone. If Mom and Dad put all that iron down, he’s gonna get hurt.”

Finn’s hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll try talking to them.”

 

 

Finn tried. It didn’t help. The iron still built the house and went into the ground. Len hurt himself exactly twice before Mick pleaded with his brother to do _something_ , but it was a month before Finn sat down and told Mick he’d be going back to Central with him. “Mom and Dad think he’ll stop coming if you’re not here. Go back to the forest.”

“He hates it there,” Mick said with a tired sigh. “He keeps trying to get out.”

Finn looked bewildered by the thought. “A fae that hates being a fae?”

“I told you he was weird.”

 

 

“It was this or iron,” Mick tried to explain when he went farther into the forest than Len liked so he could tell him. “You were going to get yourself killed if you kept trying to come over here.”

He’d expected some kind of reaction. Len would let him go if he thought Mick was better off for it, because even if he was fae, he was a self-sacrificing bastard. Sometimes, Mick thought it made him a little more human than the rest of them. Other times, he thought it just screwed Len over. But still, he’d expected _something_. Len just stared back at him, though, head tilted a little.

“Are you gonna say anything?” Mick groused. “Goodbye, maybe?”

“Chapters,” Len said simply.

“Chapters,” Mick repeated slowly , “but...not the end of the story?”

The grin Len gave him was too wide for a human face. “Pack, pack, pack,” he told him. “Put the forest to your back.”

Not a riddle, but still a rhyme. A hint, Mick realized. Len wanted him out and away from the fae’s territory. He nodded in understanding, but the look he gave Len was still sad. “See ya around.”

“Spoilers,” Len sing-songed and disappeared back into the trees.

 

 

Seven weeks and a day after he dropped his bags on the bed in Finn’s spare room, Mick heard it; a ghost of a chuckle in the wind. He stopped, Big Belly Burger bag clutched in his hand as he looked around. No shadows in the corner of his eye. His shoulders sagged, disappointed, and he kept walking.

It wasn’t until he got back to the apartment that he noticed his lighter wasn’t in his pocket anymore.

A week later, he came home and found it on his pillow, a Forget-Me-Not tied around it like a bow.

“Mom told you to put iron around my window,” Mick accused over dinner that night. “There isn’t any.”

Finn looked back at him, innocent. “There isn’t? How odd.”

 

 

Seven months and a week after he moved, he saw Len out of the corner of his eye. Not a shadow. _Len_. He spun, quick, but it was too late. He was watching him, Mick knew. The sounds in the wind. The trinkets stolen and returned. Len was there.

It worried him. Finn’s apartment was in the center of the city, far away from the trees that had reclaimed Len years ago. He used to look tired if he left the trees for too long to visit Mick.

Three days after the new year, he walked into his bedroom, tired and grumbling about the therapy appointment he’d just left, and saw Len sitting on his bed.

No, Mick did not scream. Not at all.

(He definitely screamed. Loudly.)

“What the _fuck_.”

Len waved at him.

“You…” Mick stopped. Took a breath. “How…” Another breath. “It’s not a seven,” he settled on finally. Every other new thing from Len had come on a seven before. The number had power for the fae. How the fuck-

“Happy New Year,” Len said, three days late and… Oh.

“1987,” Mick said as his lips curved up into a smile. “The whole fucking year is a seven. You sneaky fucking bastard.”

 

 

Len never told him how he got out. Mick had asked once – _only_ once – but Len’s face had gone stormy and Mick’s gut had twisted with the sudden realization that he did not _ever_ want to know what Len had to do. He let it go. Len disappeared every few days  – back to the trees, Mick figured – but he always came back and, slowly, the visits back went from every few days to once a week to once a month.

“I’m not human,” Len said, not without effort one day when the beer had made Mick bold enough to kiss him. “Human skin does not human-make. Veils and lies on tongues truth-told-” he cut himself off, looking frustrated. He was still trying to teach his tongue to talk normally again, to force the riddles to the back of his mind instead of up his throat. It didn’t always work. Puns helped, horrible as they were, but Mick’s gut was warm with alcohol and Len looked too nervous for even those.

“So?”

Len opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again when all that wanted to come were riddles.

“Don’t gotta be human, Len. You wanna act human, you do it because you wanna,” Mick told him. “I can figure out the riddles.”

“Lisa.”

Mick nodded. He knew. Len wasn’t actually connected to his human father by blood – not even by memory, because the man didn’t remember having a son – but there was a daughter now, a true Snart and human who Len had wanted to save from Lewis’ heavy hand. Len was trying to be human for her, pull himself away from the Underhill and recapture the freedom he’d lost when his human mother gave him back. He couldn’t seem to understand that Lisa was happy to have a brother regardless of what he was.

“That mean you don’t want me to kiss ya?” he asked, curious. He’d back off if Len said no. Len wasn’t even a functioning human. He was fae who was barely figuring out how to _fake_ human. Maybe it wasn’t something he could manage, if he was interested in Mick at all. The legends said fae didn’t tend to care what parts their partners had, but Len had always been a weird one. Maybe it mattered to him.

Len’s brows furrowed, trying to find words that weren’t riddles. He shook his head.

“No, it doesn’t mean you don’t want me to? Or no, you don’t want me to?”

Len held up a finger.

“First one?”

A nod.

“Okay.” Not a rejection. Good. “When you can use words, we can figure out the rest.”

He could wait to kiss him again until then.

The End


End file.
